- Magog Trust News
- Bird Reports 2019
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Annual Reviews
Each year we now produce an 'Annual Review' for Friends and Members, which incorporates a summary of our formal Year-end Report, plus what we hope are some interesting highlights of the year in question.
Previous Annual Reviews can be downloaded here:
Members and Friends are sent these annual reviews as soon as they are produced each summer, and have an opportunity to attend our AGM each October and raise any issues.
If you would like to become a Friend, you can read more on our Join Us page, and then complete the application form.
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Our neolithic heritage
Our neolithic heritage causewayed enclosures were constructed as places where chieftains or priests held revelries to help establish their power bases, according to Professor Alasdair Whittle of Cardiff University and Dr Alex Bayliss of English Heritage.
In an article quoted in the Guardian, 13th May 2012;
They were the stone-age equivalent of Glastonbury festival. People gathered in their hundreds to drink, eat and party every summer at revelries lasting several days and nights. Young men met women from nearby communities and married them. Herds of cattle were slaughtered to provide food.
These neolithic carousals even had special sites. They were held on causewayed enclosures, large hilltop earthworks built by our forebears after they brought farming to Britain from the continent 6,000 years agoî
Perhaps Stapleford once had its own Glastonbury!
See article 'How stone age man invented the art of raving'
Old Newsletters
Up until 2011 we produced a twice-yearly Newsletter, and you can still download copies of some of these here:
In 2011 the re-designed website was launched, and so the decision was taken to stop producing these Newsletters, and instead to use this website as the main means of communication for news and articles of interest.
This move away from a regular Newsletter meant that more of the Members' and Friends' subscriptions could be spent directly on the costs of upkeep and husbandry on the Down.
We would love every regular visitor to Magog Down to help support its upkeep by becoming a Friend. Read more on our Join Us page, and then complete the application form.